Slowly Mack turned.
Xiao was much smaller than her father. But even more brightly colored, mostly a delicate turquoise with gold streaks. And scales. And the four stubby legs.
“Jarrah,” Mack said.
“Ya ah ah!” Jarrah cried.
“Long,” Mack said. “What does that mean in Mandarin?”
“Dragon,” Xiao said. “I am Xiao Long—Young Dragon. And this, Mack and Jarrah and Stefan, is the place no human has seen in centuries. Long Xiang: Dragon Home.”
Stefan, his voice a whisper, said, “Dude, I think I’m dying.”
He fell from Mack’s grip and began to roll down the long ramp.
Chapter Twelve
The vast yellow dragon snaked through the sky.
The much smaller turquoise dragon—Xiao—suddenly took flight and soared up toward him.
And Stefan rolled down the ramp. With each revolution he left a small red stain on the stone.
Mack and Jarrah pelted after him, but he had picked up a fair amount of speed and the ramp was steep. It was like trying to catch a ball rolling downhill away from you.
But then, down came both dragons, Xiao and her father. They landed on the ramp in front of Stefan.
Mack felt the earth bounce from the impact of the landing.
Stefan rolled right into the giant dragon’s giant claw. He came to a stop.
Mack and Jarrah arrived breathless in the shadow of the monstrous scaled beast. Its head was as big as an SUV. Its eyes were like beach balls.
Angry beach balls.
“I have asked my father to help this boy,” Xiao said. “He has agreed.”
“However . . . ,” the giant yellow dragon said.
It was a single word, but it was a big word. The sound blast blew Jarrah’s hair back. It made Mack take a step back. It vibrated through his body from the ground up and from the air down and sort of reverberated back and forth so that he was like a Jell-O cube in an earthquake.
“However,” Xiao said, “this does not mean you might not be killed later.”
“If you can help him, do it!” Jarrah said. “We’ll take our chances.”
Xiao’s father nodded his huge head. Then, with a delicateness and care Mack would not have believed possible, he raised one leg and extended one claw and with perfect precision sliced Stefan’s shirt open.
Mack winced when he saw the wound. Jarrah let loose a small cry of dismay. It was worse when you could see it clearly. Mostly because you could see that the hole was very close to Stefan’s heart.
How was he going to live with himself if he’d gotten Stefan killed? That fear wasn’t a phobia; it was something different. Darker, more stomach churning and less panic inducing.
Xiao’s father then stuck the tip of his claw right into the hole.
“You’ll kill him!” Jarrah cried.
The huge dragon’s beach ball eyes, with vertical slits that reminded Mack of a cat’s eye—and into which a full-grown cat could fit quite easily—flicked toward Jarrah.
“Silence, girl,” the dragon said, and again, spoken in that very large voice, it had the effect of making both Jarrah and Mack think they’d better just stand there quietly until called upon.
The dragon’s claw plunged deep into the wound. Blood bubbled around it.
Then the claw was slowly, slowly withdrawn. It came away without a sign of blood. And when it was fully withdrawn, Stefan’s chest was dry and normal except for a small pink scar.
The scar was in the shape of a Chinese character.
Xiao laughed, and the giant dragon made what was possibly a smile, or a grimace of rage—it was hard to tell.
“The character means ‘lucky,’” Xiao explained.
Stefan’s eyes opened. He stared straight up at the biggest living thing he would ever see. Which was why, in shock and amazement, and obviously overcome with emotion, he said, “Huh.”
Then he hopped up, looked down at the scar, and said, “Cool. It’s like, better than a tatt.”
Jarrah rushed over and gave him a quick hug. A hug that embarrassed both her and Stefan. And Mack.
“So, what’s this about killing us?” Mack asked Xiao. “That was a joke, right?”
It was hard to read her expression. Dragons are inscrutable, to put it mildly. “We’ll talk,” she said cryptically. “First, to my home. I’ll take you, Mack. My father will carry Jarrah and Stefan.”
Daddy dragon closed a giant hand—or whatever it was—around Jarrah and another around Stefan, and without any sign of effort simply rose and slithered away into the sky.
It was a bit more awkward for Xiao. Her claws were nowhere near as big.
“Climb onto my back,” she instructed Mack.
Mack said, “Um . . . uh . . . ,” and other very intelligent things. He’d never even gone to a school-sponsored dance with a female. But in the end he did what he was told and managed to straddle Xiao’s back.
She didn’t feel slimy. Not that he had any strong opinions on what dragons should feel like. But he was still surprised that the scales were dry. They felt a little like thick leaves. Like maybe they were living tissue but they could be plastic, too.
Beneath the scales was all sinewy muscle.
“Hold on to my horns,” Xiao said.
Her horns were smaller than her father’s, and twisted like swirly soft-serve ice-cream cones.
Mack held on to Xiao’s horns. He squeezed his knees tight. He thought about closing his eyes and then realized, no, that would be stupid: better to know if she was crashing into something.
And then, without straining or even grunting, Xiao simply slithered up off the ramp. Up they went in a sinuous move that reminded Mack of when he’d seen sidewinders out in the Arizona desert.
In seconds they were halfway to the blue-painted ceiling, on a path to pass just beneath the light-filled cauldron.
Chapter Thirteen
The palace—it seemed to be the largest of the nine—was quite a place.
It looked a bit like some of the palaces in the Forbidden City, but as if they were the original size and the Forbidden City palaces were miniature versions.
It was big. Mack had been to see the Diamondbacks play at Chase Field in Phoenix. This palace was like that.
Unlike Chase Field, the palace was red. Red on the outside, red and gold on the inside. Not gold paint, Mack suspected, but actual gold. Chairs of gold, lamps of gold, decorative trim of gold.
They were deposited in a room so cavernous you could park an aircraft carrier on that polished floor. At the far end was a throne on a platform.
Xiao’s father slithered and walked to that throne and climbed up onto it. He sort of sat and sort of just draped across it, curling his tail in a coil below.
“That has got to be the biggest chair in the world,” Jarrah said.
“If it was me, I’d have an awesome flat-screen to go with that easy chair,” Stefan said.
“My father doesn’t watch a lot of TV,” Xiao said. She was once again a slim, pretty girl with thoughtful eyes and long black hair. “Follow me.”
They took a walk—about a five-minute walk—to get close to the throne. Mack was not exactly convinced he wanted to get too close. The huge yellow dragon had saved Stefan’s life. But who knew when he might get hostile?
Or hungry.
As they got closer, something that Mack had thought might be a small palace all on its own began to seem more like a very large desk. Very large pens—not ballpoints, not felt-tips, more like brushes really—stood in ornate holders.
Occupying a huge—okay, look, let’s just assume everything here was huge—wall shelf were books and rolled-up scrolls.
“My father’s books and poems,” Xiao said with a wave of her hand.
“Has Harry Potter been translated into Dragon?” Mack asked.
“My father reads all languages,” Xiao said a little snippily. “But he only writes in Chinese characters. Those are all books that he has written. Poems, pl
ays, stories, history books, observations of nature. His specialty is songbirds. He knows everything about songbirds.”
As if on cue, two bright yellow birds went fluttering past, circled, and landed on one of the dragon’s hands. The birds, at least, were normal size.
Finally Xiao came to a stop. They were still maybe fifty feet from the closest coil of the great dragon’s tail. His giant head was far above.
Xiao said, “Father, I would like to make a proper introduction. May I present Mack, Stefan, and Jarrah.”
Then she turned politely to Mack and said, “This is my honored father, Huang Long, King of Dragons.”
Mack stared. It was hard not to. He was being stared at, so he pretty much had to either stare back or curl up in a fetal position on the floor and whimper like a baby.
“What do I call him?” Mack whispered.
“You don’t,” Xiao whispered back. “He talks. You answer.”
“Right.”
Huang Long, the Dragon King, spoke. This time his voice was a bit quieter—he was using his inside voice—so it was only as loud as a rock band, not as loud as standing next to a jet engine.
“Two of you possess the enlightened puissance,” Huang Long said. “Do not be alarmed that I see this: I see most things.”
It wasn’t a question, so Mack and his friends kept quiet. He wanted to make a joke about how, with eyes that big, the dragon probably did see things pretty well. But Mack suspected this wasn’t the time for teasing.
“You are of the Magnifica,” Huang Long said.
He sighed. It was a deep sigh that seemed to first suck a blimpload of air in, and then let a blimpload of air out in what would be a strong gale or a moderate hurricane.
“So,” the Dragon King said slowly, “it is time. The Pale Queen rises again. And who will stop her now? Long has she waited and plotted and prepared. Her allies are many. Her powers great. Her evil without limit. And her foul daughter has come fully into her own.”
Still no question. But Mack was amazed to hear all this. Because it was kind of convincing when you heard it from a spectral bathroom apparition. But it was really, really convincing when you heard it from the King of Dragons.
“You have come to find the third of your number,” Huang Long said. “And alas, you have found the one.”
“You’re one of the Magnificent Twelve?” It was Jarrah, sounding both amazed and hopeful. “I mean, with you along, I like our chances a lot better.”
The Dragon King blinked. Blinked again.
Mack held his breath. But Huang Long decided not to take offense at being interrupted.
“No, little fool, not me,” he said. And then, he laughed.
You know what an earthquake feels like? (Probably not.) That’s what the dragon’s laugh was like. The ground shook, the walls vibrated, Mack’s insides were shaken and stirred.
Huang Long wiped tears of laughter away with the tip of his tail. “I am five thousand years old,” he explained. “It’s not the Magnificent Five Thousand, it’s the Magnificent Twelve. And I am not a warrior or a hero. I am a scholar. In my own humble way.”
Now he focused only on his daughter, looking at her with giant, suddenly sad eyes. “We have sensed that this day might come, Daughter. Twelve short but joyful years have passed since your mother and I had the joy of seeing you break from the egg.”
Xiao bowed her head. “I am ready, Father.”
The Dragon King shook his head slowly. “No, Daughter, you are not. No one is ready to face the Mother of All Monsters. When I was young, she was already old. But if ever one could be ready, you are.”
Mack saw tears in Xiao’s eyes. “Thank you, Father,” she whispered.
Mack’s phone rang. “Really?” he asked Xiao. “You have cell phone service down here?” He glanced at the display. The golem calling again.
It wasn’t a good time. He muted the phone. It continued to vibrate softly in his pocket.
“You may be as ready as can be, but I am not ready to see you go. And your mother will be angry with me for letting you. But we have duties, duties you understand well despite your age.”
“We are the defenders of learning and culture, of respect for our elders and for tradition,” Xiao said, like she was reciting from memory.
Huang Long nodded his head. His pride in his daughter was clear despite the fact that he was, after all, a dragon. But he was troubled, too.
“What do you know of your destiny?” Huang Long asked Mack.
“Not much,” Mack admitted. “All I know is there’s this Pale Queen, and she was locked up, like, three thousand years ago. And now she’s getting out. And we’re supposed to stop her.”
Mack was mistaken. There was no English paper in his computer. No paper of any kind. I don’t think there was even any room in there for a paper. I tried to call Mack. No answer.
Huang Long looked troubled, hesitant, like he wasn’t quite sure how much he should say. Then he took a deep breath and sighed a long, long sigh. A long sigh.
Dragons have very big lungs.
“You must learn the Vargran tongue. Those who have the enlightened puissance can use those words to magical effect. But only when they are young. Too young, and the enlightened puissance is too undisciplined. Too old, and the mind becomes too rigid. There is a very narrow window of opportunity.”
“Yes, we’ve used some Vargran words,” Mack said.
“Oh, yeah,” Stefan agreed. Then he made a whooshing noise, mimicked a fireball exploding, and pointed at Mack. “Boom. It was epic.”
“Grimluk has sent you here to find my daughter,” Huang Long said. “But perhaps even more importantly so that you may study Vargran. We have a very ancient Vargran text.” He frowned at the shelves of books. “That’s the one. The old book bound in red-dyed alligator skin.”
Mack followed the dragon’s gaze and saw the book. The book that would teach them all the secrets of Vargran. The book that might give them the power to save the entire human race.
The book that was roughly five feet wide, seven feet long, and two feet thick.
“Do you have it on a flash drive?” Mack asked. “Or maybe as a download?”
Xiao shook her head at him. “It’s not the kind of thing you get at the iBooks store.”
“You must stay with us awhile and study,” Huang Long said. “In a few short months—”
“Sir, we have thirty-five days. Maybe thirty-four, depending on how late it is.”
“Ah.” The huge dragon was taken aback. He began counting on his talons. “Yes, thirty-four days. Math was always my weakest area of study.”
“Father, we have to go soon or risk failure,” Xiao said.
The dragon looked pained. “Your mother and I hoped this day would never come, though we felt it might. I still had hopes that you would grow to wise old age, here in our home. That I would one day read with joy your own poems and books, and learn from your studies. That day may yet come, but you will be forever changed by the struggle ahead.”
Xiao said nothing, too overcome to trust herself to speak.
Huang Long then bent far forward. Mack thought he was going to give her a kiss—not that dragons have lips exactly—but he leaned down toward Stefan.
“You,” Huang Long said. “I feel your courage. Will you protect my daughter?”
Stefan did not seem the least bit frightened. It took more than a giant dragon to scare Stefan. But he seemed solemn.
“Dude,” Stefan said to the King of Dragons, “you saved my life. I totally owe you. I’ll get her back to you in one piece. Or die trying.”
That seemed to satisfy Huang Long. He sat back on his throne. “Go, my most perfect songbird, say farewell to your mother. Then, with these, your companions, assemble the Magnificent Twelve and save the world.”
It was a beautiful moment. Mack wished he had the nerve to take a picture.
But the moment didn’t last long.
There came a thump. Like a bomb going off, but not right
in the room.
And suddenly there was another dragon rushing into the room. Not quite as big as Huang Long, but definitely greener and somehow more feminine.
“Mother!” Xiao cried.
Mother dragon yelled something in a language Mack did not understand. Huang Long’s head snapped up. His eyes blazed.
Xiao spun to Mack and said, “Invaders! They’ve blown up the nine-dragon wall!”
Chapter Fourteen
STILL A LONG TIME AGO . . .
Six Toes Ricotta was the capo di tutti capi, the head Black Hand boss for New York. He was accompanied by two of his boys, Bad Breath Caprino and Fatface Pecarino.
Despite his usual caution, Paddy was excited by the invitation. It could only be a job offer. Lately the Black Hand had been growing quickly—more quickly than the Nafia—and Paddy thought he might have a better career with them.
Plus, the Black Hand had recently begun allowing its members to date. Which meant that Black Hand members could go see movies without looking lonely and pathetic. They could go out to restaurants without the waiters looking at them with pity.
The Black Hand believed you could be a ruthless killer and still find love. But the Nafia was sticking to its traditional position, which was opposed to any chance at personal happiness.
It was a beautiful day. The sun was high in the sky as the four of them drove in a steam-powered car to the golf course.
Paddy had never been on a golf course before. It was green and lush and clean. It reminded him a little of County Grind. But with fewer hovels and no pigs.
Fatface had brought a cooler. Of course, this being a long time ago, it was a steam-powered cooler.
“Have a drink, Paddy,” Six Toes said. “Fatface! Give the kid a drink.”
And standing there on that endless green grass with a glass of chilled wine in his hand, Paddy felt mighty good.